Breaking…
Ships did not cut internet cable.
No ships were present when two marine cables carrying much of the Middle East’s internet traffic were severed, Egypt’s Ministry of Communications has said, contrary to earlier speculation about the causes of the cut.
The ministry had originally stated that a ship dropping its anchor on the two key cables was most likely responsible for Wednesday’s cut in service that robbed Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India of most of their internet connections.
“A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time,” said the statement.
The ministry added that the location, 5 miles from the port of Alexandria, was in a restricted area so ships would not have been allowed there to begin with.
Internet connectivity in Egypt had now reached 70-80 per cent of its previous rate due to rerouted connections through alternate cables in the Far East and to Italy, added the statement.
Two ships have sailed from France and Italy at the request of cable owners Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) and the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) and will begin repairs which are expected to take several days.
The ministry estimated that full service in Egypt would not be restored for another ten days.
Hmmmmm….
(Long pause…)
HMMMMMMMMM…!!!
Read on.
In times of possible great change…see my Obama article (Barack Obama’s Excellent Adventure. Or…St. Quantum Takes Yet Another Electroflying Leap. ) possible great resistance ramps up at the same time.
The more things change, the more they try to remain the same.
Watch.
And pray.
Is this Israeli/U.S. sabotage in preparation for some REAL shit?
From rense.com. (Yeah…I know. Rense. But I’ve been thinking about this for days.)
The website, internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm, reports that as of Friday, 1 February 2008, internet traffic routing through/from/to Iran has been cut to zero. Packet loss is 100%. (4)
2. Whereas CNN reported on Thursday, 31 January 2008, that internet traffic to Israel has been unaffected because Israel uses a “different route”. The same CNN article also reports that Lebanon and Iraq have been “spared the chaos”. (5)
So, the sudden, unprecedented round of undersea, communications cable cutting in the Middle East leaves Israel and Iraq still connected, while completely shutting down the Iranian internet.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
The situation is well beyond our individual means to affect anyway, except by understanding.
And real understanding IS real prayer.
Bet on it.
Let us pray…
AG
Coincidentally, I am GOING to Egypt in about 10 days.
May you be born with interesting…timing.
Later…
AG
You’re a brave soul. Got your Canadian passport?
No.
Just my Irishman’s attitude.
The thought has crossed my mind that this might be some hazardous duty, what with the Gaza breach and all. And now THIS shit.
But then another thought crosses my mind.
The one with which I try to remember to begin every day.
And then I go along my ever-so-merry way.
No matter where that road may lead me.
Gonna go play Duke Ellington music…the real thing, big band and all…outdoors in front of the pyramids.
Really.
If you gotta go, may as well be for something worth going for, right?
Right.
(Or so I keep telling myself, anyway.)
Later…
AG
Steven D, get with it “Canadian” is the new racial slur word for Afro-Americans.
The uncertainty of these times must encourage you to play the best you ever can, no?
I would restate your motto as “It`s a good day to play”.
Dying would then be secondary.
As far as the odds of four cables going out almost at the same time, seems almost incredible, but be assured that it will be used to the best advantage to those who are users of such events. It could also be a test to see what kind of reaction occurs, when communication is lost. So far, there does not seem to be that much interest in questioning the odds of four closely spaced cable “breaks”.
Enjoy your music at the pyramids. Not many people can say they played there, in the grand scheme of things, but you`re in the company of Cleopatra`s boogie woogie band, Tut`s trumpeters ….
Enjoy your gig at that ancient place. Very cool. Stay safe.
Maybe they cut the cables to keep you from live-blogging your first hand thoughts on the state of things in that place? 🙂
I was thinking the same thing when I heard this news blip. Just can’t believe in coincidence theory anymore.
I see the question of the moment is, just where is the USS Jimmy Carter?
AG, some have been angling for an extension of hostilities in the Middle East to break out with heat.
Ask Seymour Hersh
His new piece in The New Yorker is up
A Strike in the Dark
What did Israel bomb in Syria?
A couple theories that I’ve seen rattling around the blogscape are 1) it was an effort to disrupt coordination of any planned attack on the Super Bowl & 2) Iran’s new oil bourse which is scheduled to open this week or next intends on dealing oil in currency other than U.S. dollars so the interruption could be a means of throwing a monkey wrench into their plans, at least for the time being. It will be interesting to see how quickly the connections are restored – i.e. was it a physical disconnection or a virtual one?
I believe that there are ships on the way to make repairs, so I would assume it`s a physical break, which makes the coincidence aspect of four breaks, seem preposterous. The breaks are not in the immediate vicinity of each other, either, but separated by hundreds of miles & different bodies of water. It`s not like a ship`s anchor ripped up four adjacent cables, especially when no ships were reported to have been in the areas of the breaks, respectively.
As far as the “Black Sunday” idea; even though it wouldn`t surprise me in the least, I tend to think that not mentioning that aspect might get one closer to an answer, rather than be dismissed as a “fruitcake”. At the same time, there are a lot of “fruitcakes” walking around who have been right all along.
.
Tata Indicom Cable (TIC) is Singapore’s first fully Indian-owned, undersea fiber-optic cable that is in operation since 2004. The 3,175-km cable lands in Chennai in India and in Changi in Singapore.
In the case of India, services were largely restored within 24 hours of the cable cut, by diverting traffic through the TIC and SEA-ME-WE 3 cables.
DUBAI, U.A.E. (Khaleej Times) Feb. 5, 2008 — An estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected by the recent undersea cable damage, an expert said, quoting recent figures published by TeleGeography, an international research Web site.
Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.”
A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."